In spite of this diplomatic introduction, however, his friends at Rome, well aware of the malice of his enemies, and having had but a few months before to defend “Il Saggiatore,” urgently dissuaded him from having this rather warm defence of a forbidden doctrine printed.[206] He gave heed to their warnings, and so this reply was only circulated in numerous copies among the learned world in Italy.
Meanwhile the reports which Galileo was constantly receiving from his friends at Rome tended to increase his confidence in the favourable influence which Urban’s personal liking for him, and his taste for art and science, were likely to exercise on tolerance of the Copernican system. Thus his devoted adherent Guiducci, in several letters of 6th, 13th and 24th September, 1624,[207] told him, that through the mediation of the Jesuit father, Tarquinio Galuzzi, he had had several interviews with Galileo’s former bitter adversary, Father Grassi, who had said that Galileo’s theory that the phenomena of the tides were to be attributed to the double motion of the earth “was very ingenious,” and that when the truth of these opinions was unanswerably established, the theologians would bestir themselves to alter the interpretation of those passages of Scripture which refer to the earth as being stationary! The guileless Guiducci added confidentially, quite taken with this Jesuit’s amiability, that he had not noticed any great aversion to the new system in Grassi, indeed he did not despair of estranging “Lothario Sarsi” from Ptolemy.
Two months later, however, the same correspondent told Galileo that a violent harangue had been delivered in the Jesuit College at Rome against the adherents of the new doctrine, by Father Spinola, and some time afterwards he sent him a copy of it;[208] but as it attacked all those who did not profess to be followers of an antiquated Peripateticism, it made but little impression on Galileo, and that little was entirely effaced when Mgr. Ciampoli wrote to him, on 28th December, 1625, that he had acquainted the Pope with several passages of his reply to Ingoli, and that he had highly approved them.[209]
Before long Guiducci found out how bitterly he had been deceived in Grassi, and what a miserable game he had been playing with him as Galileo’s friend. The memory of the favours by which the Pope had distinguished the great Tuscan when at Rome had scarcely died away when Grassi threw aside the mask, and “Lothario Sarsi” exhibited himself in a new and revised edition, fulminating rage and venom against Galileo and his system. Notwithstanding the hypocritical moderation exhibited to Guiducci, he had not forgotten the mortifying defeat which “Il Saggiatore” had subjected him to, and, though circumstances had prevented him from defending himself at once, he had by no means given up the intention of doing so. Two years having elapsed since Galileo’s visit to Rome, Grassi thought he might venture, under pretext of a reply to “Il Saggiatore,” to publish a new attack on its author. It was entitled, in bad Latin: “Ratio ponderum Libræ et Simbellæ, etc. Autore Lothario Sarsi Sigensano.” It contained many personal accusations against Galileo, and the work altogether was characterized by a blind hatred, which repeatedly led the author into very foolish statements. For instance, Grassi tried incidentally to prove by very ingenious arguments that Galileo’s physics would lead to the denial of the real presence in the Lord’s Supper![210] But the enraged Jesuit went still further, and gave his readers pretty plainly to understand that since Galileo agreed on many questions of physics with Epicurus, Telesius, and Cardanus, he must also approve their godlessness, which strange assertion, however, he did not venture to sustain by any evidence.